Location, Location, Location: Mount Desert Island, Maine
07/02/2004
The Rockefellers know how to avoid crowds. So do the Pierreponts, the Drexels, the Biddles, the Strawbridges and Brooke Astor. They all spend the summer in the quaint villages of Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor on Mount Desert (pronounced “dessert”) Island, Maine. Since most of the island is occupied by Acadia National Park’s 30,300 unspoiled acres, the villages are safe from encroaching development. Rolling hills dotted with tall spruce give way to granite seaside cliffs. Winding roads sprinkled with capacious Shingle-style and New England colonial white clapboard homes reveal glimpses of the sparkling Atlantic.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Southerly was built in 1994 in the Shingle
style and
sited to face Acadia National Park. Listed with Story Litchfield of
LandVest at $12.75 million. (Click image to enlarge)Old-guard Bostonians, Philadelphians and New Yorkers are regulars, but outsiders from Texas, including Robert Bass, and the South have lately discovered the isle. In 1997, Martha Stewart purchased Skylands, the 12-bedroom Seal Harbor house on 60-some-acres originally owned by Edsel Ford.
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Southerly, in Seal Harbor. (Click image to enlarge)Although Mount Desert, named L’Isle des Monts-Deserts by French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604, attracted artists, intellectuals and affluent families in the 1840s, the 1908 arrival of John D. Rockefeller Jr. helped secure the area’s noncommercial look. He purchased 30,000 acres for his family and gave 11,000 acres to the nascent Acadia National Park, which opened in 1916.
But this is not Palm Beach or Southampton, and there is no Worth Avenue or Job’s Lane. You have arrived in Seal Harbor when you pass the café next to the storefront office of architect Peter Forbes. Northeast Harbor’s main street extends several blocks with shops, cafés and inns. Residents are happy to keep a low profile and entertain at home. A big night out includes dinner at Abel’s Lobster Pound on Somes Sound (go by boat for the scenery) or the restaurant Islesford Dock on Little Cranberry Island, which can only be reached by water.
Yachters can set sail at Northeast Harbor Fleet or Seal Harbor Yacht Club (to get in, it helps to be born into the club’s membership). The swimming and tennis clubs—the Northeast Harbor Swim and Tennis Club and Seal Harbor’s Harbor Club—are even more difficult to join (they say married members often stay together since memberships cannot be split in a divorce). While golf is available, the private 18-hole Northeast Harbor Golf Club has a waiting list.
Getting into Acadia National Park for a hike is less socially stressful. If you
prefer the scenic tour, try a carriage ride on the 51 miles of park-owned roads.
Beautiful public gardens include the Asticou Azalea Garden, near the
Shingle-style Asticou Inn, and the Thuya Garden. The local favorite is the
private Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, an unusual combination of Asian
artifacts and English landscape planning designed by Beatrix Farrand in the
1920s (appointments are taken for Thursday mornings in July and August;
207.276.5130).
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Tide Race, built by Philadelphia architect George Howe in 1942 for Mrs. Alfred
Greenough, has a private dock and 375 feet of shore frontage. (Click image to enlarge)In keeping with the setting, a premium is placed on historic
architecture. Shingle-style summer cottages date to the 1880s when Boston
architecture firm Peabody & Stearns designed many houses, including Seal
Harbor’s Ravenscleft, which is typical of the genre, albeit with half-timbered
Tudor touches. Priced at $4.5 million with the Knowles Co., the nine-bedroom
home, with 700 feet of water frontage, offers staggering views from its
clifflike perch.
New home construction often adheres to the Shingle-style
aesthetic, including houses designed by New York architect Robert A.M. Stern for
Frederick Bourke of Dooney & Bourke and his former wife Eleanor “Nonie” (of
the Ford family). Southerly, an 18,000-square-foot cottage designed in 1994 by
architect Durand Seay of Alabama, offers 307 feet of ocean frontage and is
listed for $12.75 million with LandVest.
Modern architecture does exist in
this enclave of traditional taste. In 1939, Philadelphia architect George Howe
designed the rectilinear Fortune Rock for Clara Fargo Thomas at Somes Sound.
Nelson Rockefeller hired Wallace Harrison to build the Anchorage in Seal Harbor
in 1941—a modern glass-and-steel house with a semicircular living room. Another
modern beauty, Tide Race, created in 1942 by Howe for Mrs. Alfred Greenough in
Somesville, is only 2,000 square feet, but embraces stunning views of Somes
Sound with more than 375 feet of shoreline. Knowles Co. is listing the property
at $1.3 million. The most dramatic contemporary home is the shiplike house Peter
Forbes designed high on the hill in Seal Harbor.
But most residents prefer
an always-been-here look. On the east side of Seal Harbor’s Ox Hill, David
Rockefeller Sr. subdivided his 60 acres into nine lots of three to
six-and-a-half acres. While four lots have sold, only one home has been built.
Designed by Armand LeGardeur, a New York architect who worked with Stern, the
house belongs to Walt Disney Co. Chairman George Mitchell, the former Maine
senator.
As real estate consultant Jerome Suminsby says, “This is a slow
growth approach.” Which is exactly what Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor are
about—slow growth, slow life and a sensitivity to nature.
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Tide Race is located in
Somesville, the first village settled on Mount Desert Island, it is listed with
the Knowles Co. for $1.3 million. (Click image to enlarge)Facts & Stats
Crowd control: The town of Mount Desert comprises the villages of Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor, Somesville and part of Otter Creek. The year-round population of about 21,000 quadruples in the summer.
Flight information: Bangor International Airport is 90 minutes away. Bar Harbor Airport, which accommodates commercial and private planes, is 30 minutes away and welcomes around 250 private jets during the summer.
Anchors away: Northeast Harbor Marina offers seasonal and transient mooring, May 15 to October 1. The 54-slip marina accommodates boats up to 160 feet long (from $1.50 per foot, for up to 50 feet, to $2.75 per foot for boats 60 feet and longer); requests are accepted after January 1. Seasonal mooring minimums are 45 days; overnight transient mooring is available, but cannot extend more than 30 consecutive days.
Housing bank: According to Keating Pepper of the Knowles Co., two-bedroom homes cost around $350,000 in the villages, while shorefront houses and those up the hill in Seal Harbor sell for around $5 million.
Realtor 101:
Keating
Pepper or Torie Hallock
Knowles Co., Northeast Harbor
207.276.3322
www.knowlesco.com
Story Litchfield
LandVest, Northeast Harbor
207.276.3840
www.landvest.com